The Westminster Model and the Collapse of the Postcolonial Order

• Author: Tennyson S.D. Joseph
• Pages: 116-139

The Westminster Model and the

Collapse of the Postcolonial Order

Tennyson S.D. Joseph

Introduction

Paul Sutton, writing on the historical experience of constitutional

change in the English-speaking Caribbean, makes two observations

that are critical to understanding the essential crux and concern of this

chapter. In reference to the ‘content’ of proposed constitutional reforms,

Sutton observes that suggested changes have been rather limited in form

and do not overturn the essential basis of the Westminster system. In

his view, most of the standard recommendations and related proposals

all point to ‘modifications’ of Westminster rather than its complete

elimination. This is seen, for example, in the recommendations

pertaining to:

the role of the head of state, including whether they are to be a

ceremonial president or an executive president; a limitation on the

powers of the prime minister, including restrictions on the number

of terms served; the method of election for the lower house and of

nomination for the upper house.1

Sutton’s second observation is that ongoing efforts at constitutional

change have been pursued outside the context of wider and deeper

economic and political developments, which would feed organically

into a genuine framework for overcoming Westminster. In support

of this, he identifies the limited use of the facility of the ‘constituent

assembly’ as the framework for pursuing constitutional change, since

the convening of constitutional conventions is normally associated with

major crises and the Commonwealth Caribbean has witnessed more

stability than crisis.2 Thus, in the absence of a context of unquestionable

and ongoing crisis he concludes that:

There is no appetite for fundamental constitutional change among

the majority in the region and that substantial constitutional change

is very much a minority interest; even among the political elites. It

also indicates that when constitutional change occurs it is as or more

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likely to take the form of amendment to the existing constitution rather

than take the form of a commitment to a wholly new one with significant

departure from existing norms and practices.3

It is Sutton’s denial of the immediate presence of crisis, and by

extension, his reduced expectation of radical constitutional deviations from

Westminster, which provides the substantive point of departure of this

chapter. In contrast to Sutton’s explanation of conformity to Westminster

and mild reform as the consequence of the absence of genuine crisis,

this chapter argues instead that much of the region’s conformity to

Westminster can be explained by the deliberate management of the

process of constitutional reform by regional elites who have resisted radical

options, despite the compelling nature of crisis conditions which demand

such radical transformation. The chapter argues that the post-2008 socio-

economic crisis is impacting on the political process in a manner which

may overturn Sutton’s assumption of commitment to Westminster as the

foreseeable constitutional future for the Caribbean. This crisis presents

a moment of socio-economic disruption which will have significant

implications for the political and governance framework of the Caribbean.

The chapter, therefore, has three main concerns. The first, in keeping with

a Marxist analysis of the relationship between economic transformation and

political change, is to make a claim that the current moment in Caribbean

development presents features consistent with the end of the ‘postcolonial’

order, and as a consequence, presents a material basis qualitatively different

from the one in which Westminster was established as the ‘appropriate’

model for the Caribbean. While accepting Sutton’s claim of the historical

reluctance among Caribbean elites to radically overhaul Westminster, the

chapter argues that since 2008, a moment of genuine crisis has emerged

in the Caribbean, particularly when compounded with the ongoing crises

associated with globalization, trade liberalization, the end of the Cold War

and all their attendant consequences since the 1980s. The case is thus

presented for understanding the present moment as one of collapse of

the postcolonial order, and identifies this as the basis upon which a more

radical overhaul of the Westminster system is possible.

A second and related concern of the chapter is to demonstrate the ways

in which Caribbean ruling elites have used the formal mechanisms of

constitutional change to resist the radical overhaul of the Westminster

system. A critique of the historical practice of constitutional change in the

Caribbean is presented, largely on the grounds that the dominant methods